WMI & LPR Present

May

11

Tanya Tagaq Tanya Tagaq

with Eva Salina & Peter Stan

Fri May 11th, 2018

7:30PM

Main Space

Minimum Age: 18+

Doors Open: 6:30PM

Show Time: 7:30PM

Event Ticket: $30

Day of Show: $35

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Canada’s celebrated Inuk performer Tanya Tagaq employs exquisite, unnerving vocal improvisations that blend vocal techniques from metal, rock, improvisational and new music worlds with elements of Inuit throat singing. Tanya’s heritage is never far from her mind, and it has a political edge (growing up in a majority Inuit area, Tanya saw the effects of Canadian attempts to systematically dismantle Inuit culture). Tagaq’s art challenges static ideas of genre and culture and contends with themes of environmentalism, human rights, and colonialism.

Hailed by Rolling Stone as “one of today’s most electric, transfixing performers in any genre,” Tagaq was the recipient of Canada’s prestigious Polaris Music Prize in 2014 for her album “Animism.” She has also been named to the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest honors. Tanya’s most recent album “Retribution” was released in fall 2016, landing on many of the year’s ‘best of’ lists, with Fader calling it “one of the most stunning records you’ll hear this year, or maybe ever.”

“She taps into humanity’s most naked emotions and forces them into the spotlight… the best musical performance any of us had ever seen.” – Vice Music

This concert is part of World Music Institute’s Counterpoint Series.

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Tanya Tagaq

Tanya Tagaq official site | Tanya Tagaq on Facebook | Tanya Tagaq on Twitter

Experimental vocalist and artist Tanya Tagaq won the Polaris Prize for best Canadian album in 2014, for Animism. Those who thought she had then made her definitive artistic statement are in for a surprise.

Also in for a shock are those who thought international success, playing to major festivals and packed houses all over the world, would lead to a mellower sound, or a more laid back approach.

Tagaq follows up Animism with Retribution, an even more musically aggressive, more aggressively political, more challenging, more spine tingling, more powerful masterpiece.

There are those who find comfort in the bland sweetness of middle of the road love songs designed to soothe. But then there are music fans that find comfort in honesty, blazing human talent and free, intelligent expression of passion. This album is not dinner party ambience music.

This album is a cohesive, whole statement. Why sugarcoat it? This album is about rape. Rape of women, rape of the land, rape of children, despoiling of traditional lands without consent. Hence the cover version of Nirvana’s song “Rape Me.” It’s at least a hundred times more chilling than the original.

Retribution is Tanya Tagaq’s portrait of a violent world in crisis, hovering on the brink of destruction. It’s a complex, exhilarating, howling protest that links lack of respect for women’s rights to lack of respect for the planet, to lack of respect for Indigenous rights. It’s an album about celebrating the great strength of women, it’s about rejecting the toxic, militaristic masculinity that’s taken over the world since the rise of Western industrial capitalism, and is rapidly destroying human life support systems through climate change and pollution. In a startling lyric from the title track, she observes, “Money has spent us.”

The Inuit people live on the cutting edge of the climate emergency. As sea ice dwindles at astonishing rates, they are witnessing the death of the entire Arctic ecosystem, as the colonialist machine rolls on, mining newly uncovered areas for diamonds. And the Inuit know the truth about the contemporary natures of the crimes at the center of Canada’s identity. Tagaq herself is a survivor of Canada’s infamous genocidal Residential School System, something most Canadians would rather imagine as a dealt-with thing of the distant past.

Tagaq is the leader of this project, and she uses the power of her voice, the power of her commitment to her performance, the power of her informed, uncompromising artistic standards, to draw other, similarly committed and talented people to her mission. Jesse Zubot collaborates as producer and lead violinist, creating a stunning array of sound, employing mastery over his instrument and an arsenal of digital and analogue effects. Jean Martin’s drumming builds dynamics and rolls devastatingly across the sonic landscape like a tank division of Tagaq Army, an army which also includes Tuvan throat singer Raddick Tulush, rapper Shad, traditional Inuk singer Ruben Komangapik, and Tagaq’s own young daughter, Inuuja, who is brought in on the first song, like a symbolic character in a novel, to represent both the hope of the future and also to elicit shame for the betrayals we are visiting on the generations to come.

We defy you to listen to this album without weeping, without shuddering, without feeling its intense power and immediacy. This is dramatic, relevant, stunning music. “Retribution will be swift.”

Eva Salina & Peter Stan

Eva Salina official site | Eva Salina on Facebook

In their collaboration, Eva Salina & Peter Stan pick up and continue an interrupted legacy of empowered female voices in Balkan Romani (gypsy) music. Amplifying voices of past generations of Romani women musicians, Eva & Peter employ tenderness, grace, passion and a commitment to keeping these songs alive and evolving, while inspiring and teaching young people in the Balkans & Balkan diaspora to participate in living traditions. Eva & Peter were featured artists at globalFEST 2018 ( “poised, lustrous”—NY Times, 1/15/18), and released their first duo album, SUDBINA (“…darkly glorious”—Popmatters), 3/30/2018 on Vogiton Records.

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